press releases

N° 28-1994

EUROMIR 94 heralds new era of cooperation in space

28 September 1994

A new era of international cooperation in space begins next week when an ESA astronaut blasts off on EUROMIR 94, a month-long mission to the Russian Mir space station.

ESA astronaut Ulf Merbold from Germany, a veteran of two US Space Shuttle missions, and Russian cosmonauts Aleksandr Viktorenko and Elena Kondakova, are scheduled for launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the night of 3 and 4 October 1994 aboard the Soyuz TM-20 spacecraft. Two days later they will dock with the 130-ton Mir complex, orbiting some 400 km above the planet.

ESA and its Russian counterparts are learning to work together before joining forces later in the decade to build the International Space Station. "This flight will start paving the way to the International Space Station, when European astronauts will live and work in space alongside with Americans, Canadians, Japanese and Russians", said Jean- Marie Luton, ESA's Director General.

The 30-day EUROMIR 94 mission will be the longest space flight by a western European astronaut. Experiments will mostly concentrate on the effects of space on the human body. The findings will benefit future space travellers and may lead to breakthroughs in medicine on Earth, particularly in the treatment of heart diseases and neurological, muscular, circulatory and bone disorders.

After 30 days, Merbold will return to Earth aboard the Soyuz TM-19 spacecraft, with the current Mir crew members Yuri Malenchencko and Talgat Musabayev. Merbold, along with the other ESA astronaut in stand-by for this flight, the Spanish Pedro Duque, has been training for EUROMIR 94 since August 1993 at Star City, near Moscow. Merbold was a payload specialist on Space Shuttle mission STS-9 (Spacelab) in November-December 1982 and STS-42 in January 1992. He will be the first West European to fly on both US and Russian spacecraft.

Two other ESA astronauts are currently in training at Star City: Christer Fuglesang from Sweden and Thomas Reiter from Germany are preparing for EUROMIR 95, a 135-day mission that includes a spacewalk.

Opportunities for the media:A press information center will be established during the EUROMIR 94 mission at ESA's European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne. This press center will provide information on the mission, its progress and status. It is linked to the Russian Control Center TsUP in Kaliningrad, near Moscow and ESA's payload support Centre SCOPE in the CNES facilities in Toulouse via a satellite video link where there will be opportunities to see live transmission from the space station Mir.

- 19 October: "Space class", school children from ESA Member States will be in contact with Ulf Merbold teaching space directly from space station Mir. This event will take place at ESA/ESTEC in Noordwijk, Holland.

- 24 October: "Press conference" at the SCOPE in CNES-Toulouse. Ulf Merbold from space and Pedro Duque from the TsUP Mission Control center will talk live to the press about their experience.